Vadra’s wealth, Congress in turmoilIs Sonia family getting its just desserts, finally?

Aditya Pradhan 

IT is undeniable that Arvind Kejriwal of the India Against Corruption (IAC) has become the pivot of anti-corruption movement around the country inasmuch as people sending him tomes of documents of various nefarious deals struck by politicians and corporates. Second, Kejriwal has struck a raw nerve in the Congress with his campaign against Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra. There has been, all this time, an unwritten code of silence put into practice, which forsakes any reference to the Sonia family in any of the scandals. Even in the series of events leading to the 2G, CWG or the Coalgate scandals no one clearly suggested that the Sonia family has been the beneficiary though it was implied. Kejriwal has at last broken that code.In the DLF-Haryana Government-Robert Vadra imbroglio, the last word cannot be written as new evidence is crawling out of the holes slowly, but certainly. It is also undeniable that the dealings of Robert Vadra were the worst-kept secret in Delhi’s political circles. Today, even the media is saying that they knew about all this a long time ago.The day the scandal broke, almost all the Union Congress ministers including P Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid, Jayanti Natarajan, Manish Tiwari among others sprung to defend Robert Vadra without the customary ‘law will take its own course’ line. This reaction coming from Union Ministers for a avowed ‘private citizen’ is strange especially because the nexus between realty major DLF and Robert Vadra is apparent. Just after the allegations were made about the business advance the stock exchange-listed real estate company gave Vadra, there was no denial as to the veracity of the claims.The law is clear on some aspects of the deal but grey on others. To begin with auditors have now said that accounting rules do not even permit DLF to give interest-free loans to their own subsidiaries, let alone to an outsider without any prior linkages between the two. If Robert Vadra has gained so much as to buy real estate with the advance and make windfall profits, then there has to be something that DLF must have got in return. Will an ordinary citizen get that kind of advance from a real estate firm to make investments? There is also a quirky second angle to the deal – if the advance amount, as claimed by Robert Vadra’s staunch supporters on TV news debates, was refunded without reaching maturity, it casts a shadow on the transaction itself. This discrepancy has been brought out by the auditors in recent media reports.Robert Vadra floated a number of companies (which is perfectly legal, but the intention behind is suspect) in a short span of time only to obfuscate the system. Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd in which Robert Vadra has a majority stake (99.8 per cent), has funded assets worth Rs 48.53 crore when its paid-up capital is only Rs 5 lakh! The company has never raised secured or unsecured loans, which means that the owners of the company have invested Rs 5 lakh of their own money in the company. Even a brilliant legal mind like Manish Tiwari struggles to explain these infirmities. And by the way, the other stake holder in this company is Vadra’s  mother Maureen who holds 0.2 per cent stake in the company. If one goes by the updated information on the balance sheets of various companies involved in this scandal including DLF, it becomes clear that there are lot many loopholes. Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd owned by Robert Vadra has total assets of Rs 48.53 crore, inclusive of fixed assets worth Rs 16.18 crore. The company also has investments worth Rs 24.37 crore, while its cash and bank balances amount to Rs 4.77 crore. Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd  has also given loans and advances amounting to Rs 3.21 crore. The moot point in all this is: how can a company with a paid-up capital of Rs 5 lakh, fund assets be worth Rs 48.53 crore? Even a back of the envelope calculation will reveal that the asset to shareholder capital ratio is an unbelievable 971 times. How can Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd  in which Robert Vadra invested Rs 5 lakh end up with assets of Rs 48.53 crore?Now coming to answers that have been floated around and suggested by the Congress party is that the company could have borrowed money to buy assets, while the balance amount is deposited in the bank or have been lent to others. The question to that is: Skylight has no secured or unsecured loans declared in its books of accounts.According to DLF, Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd approached DLF to sell a piece of land measuring approximately 3.5 acres just off NH 8 in Village Sikohpur, District Gurgaon. DLF agreed to buy the said plot, given its licencing status and its attractiveness as a business proposition for a total consideration of Rs 58 crore. As per “normal commercial practice”, the possession of the said plot was taken over by DLF in FY 2008-09 itself and a total sum of Rs 50-crore given as advance in instalments against the Purchase consideration.Now DLF has said that it is normal commercial practice to give advance against plots, but here the advance is of Rs 50 crore to Vadra’s Skylight and the plot was worth Rs 58 crore. Let’s face it, how many of us can get advances worth Rs 50 crore which would be just 86.3 per cent of the value of the property.If one goes on to peruse the balance sheets of both the companies there are so many infirmities that a case can be built up on the strength of the unanswered questions alone. The best part of the deal is that the accused in this case, Robert Vadra is not even talking about it, other than of course, “mango people in banana republic”.The latest set of documents released by activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal put paid to the defence of the Haryana government that there was nothing improper in the gifting away land for DLF. The same land was meant for a hospital. It was Haryana government’s defence that the land was released to East India Hotels Ltd more than 16 years ago and permission was granted to it to sell the land to DLF “after following due process of law”.But the state government admitted that it had received representations from East India Hotels Ltd and DLF about the inability to utilise the land for building a hospital and had sought change of land use. The permission was given by the state government promptly after the law department gave its approval.The story gets murkier when the sale of 30 acres in Gurgaon meant for a hospital was made to the realty major for developing an SEZ and Robert Vadra buys a stake in the company. The allegations get thicker and sleazer as the Congress-led state government released the plot in 1996 to East India Hotels on the strict condition that it build a 300-bed hospital there which never came up.The notification specifies that while 11.25 acres should be sufficient for a hospital, the accompanying green belt would have to be maintained by the allottee. Kejriwal avers that despite no hospital being built on the land till 2005, the state government failed to take action against the company nor take the land back.To add to the scandalous land use change, East India Hotels sold the land to DLF and the government permitted this transaction with all the attendant change in land use. The Congress government in Haryana also tried resorting to subterfuge by stating that the density of people in the masterplan was changed only by units (per acre to per hectare), but Kejriwal demolished it by saying that increasing FAR in the Gurgaon-Manesar complex plan 2031 as compared to 2025 benefited DLF Phase V.The activist reiterated that the population density was increased from 250 to 625 persons per hectare in the 2031 plan, which translated into a substantial increase in FAR.But as more and more documents come out in the open it is becoming quite clear that more damaging evidence may still be on its way and Robert Vadra’s goose will be finally cooked, in spite of Congress spokepersons incredulous noise on TV debates.?